Kingdoms

100% Silk; 2012

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A colleague recently admitted that listening to Kingdoms, the debut release from UK electronic artist Mike Norris' Fort Romeau project, left him "confused." I can sympathize. The mini-LP is seeing distrubution via 100% Silk (a subsidiary of the Los Angeles-based experimental label Not Not Fun), an imprint that's coined repute on a strain of American dance music that, along with artists like Blondes, Teengirl Fantasy, and Miracles Club, has been unfortunately tagged by some as "hipster house." Many of the label's releases showcase distanced takes on house and techno with varying fidelity. The aesthetic seems more incidental than intentional-- remember, the people making this stuff are largely DIY experimental musicians, working on shoestring budgets-- but regardless, it's easy to see why some dance purists treat this movement with light derision. After all, what good is club music if the music itself sounds like it's being played in a neighboring room?

Kingdoms is something of an aberration in the label's catalog thus far, then-- both in that it doesn't sound like dance music filtered through a giant paper cone, and in that the person that made this music is involved with honest-to-god Pop Music. Norris has been making music on his own since he was 14 years old, but for the last few years he's been playing keyboards and handling other assorted live duties for glossy nü-wave upstarts La Roux. My favorite song from La Roux's 2009 self-titled debut is "I'm Not Your Toy", a spazzy piece of melodic tartness with synths that sound brittle and chintzy-- in other words, slow the tempo and run it through a few filters, and you just might end up with something that would sound perfectly at home on a 100% Silk release.

There's nothing brittle or distanced about Kingdoms, though-- quite the opposite, in fact. This is lush, deep house music, the kind of thump-thump that rubs up against your eardrums without giving you a headache (if the insistent vocal sample in opener "Jack Rollin'" makes you reach for the Excedrin, though, it's understandable). Even the fuzziest elements-- a euphoric shout buried in the mix of "Theo", the piping clatter of tones that open "I Need U"-- carry a certain crisp clarity to them, making for a record that sounds as expensive as the mondo-diamond being contemplated by the woman on the release's cover art.

Ironically, despite his Coachella-tent pedigree, gear fetishists would most likely consider Norris' tools used for Kingdoms to be "quaint": a lone synthesizer (a Yamaha DX7), and a seven-year-old laptop. Given what he's working with here, then, the range of sonic emotions on display is impressive, switching from hard-hitting "going out" fare ("Theo", "Jack Rollin'") to moody, luxurious "staying in" slow-burners ("I Need U", "One Night"). Almost every song contains some sort of vocal sample, rippling through the album's steady 4/4 waters; a few of them-- the 4 a.m. highlight "Say Something", especially-- transcend functionality and become burrowed earworms in their own right.

Kingdoms' chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo-- smooth-as-silk house cuts with evocative vocals ping-ponging within the expansive space-- has led at least one person I know to draw a comparison between this record and Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti's landmark work as Luomo, 2000's Vocalcity. On a surface level, the comparison's apt, but what sets Norris' work back when compared to those who make "house music proper" is its lack of scope and pure playfulness, a detriment that possibly results from his own technological limitations. There are a lot of excellent ideas on Kingdoms-- but that's all they are in the end, really, a group of singular ideas and not much more. Norris' debut effort is confident in its own right, and its comfort-food enjoyability hardly wears after the hundredth spin. Hopefully, he'll feel more of an urge to color outside the lines next time around.